


Dreamcatcher

by amuk



Series: The Road To Life [11]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Death, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Loss, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amuk/pseuds/amuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Konan follows them and thinks this is just like how it began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamcatcher

**Author's Note:**

> Konan's loyalty was quite admirable.

She follows their bodies and thinks that even in death it is the same. Konan is still following them ( _when will you ever have any dreams of your own, silly girl?_ ) but they have gone somewhere she can’t follow anymore. She can’t even remember when this game of tag started, only that she was always it, left behind to follow their trail.

 

(That was all she could do—watch and follow and hope that when they fell, she was there to catch them.

 

And now she can’t.)

 

It wasn’t out of love that she followed the two of them. At least not in the romantic sense—once upon a time it could have been but their eyes were always on the sky, waiting for that sunset.

 

(Once upon a time, she would have tried to get their attention, to get their eyes to look at the ground for once. Was the sunset really that important that they couldn’t look at her for a moment?

 

To her, they were more important than any dream so she chased theirs instead. Chased them and their wants until she didn’t remember what it was that she wanted anymore except that she wanted to stay with them.

 

She might have given up too easily.)

 

Instead, she was their patient sister and the worried mother, always waiting and wondering whether or not she should stop them.

 

Whether or not she could stop them.

 

She thinks she followed them for those pieces of running through the streets as fast as fast as she can ( _never fast enough_ ) and the grins or sighs after looking at the spoils. The mornings where one was too tired to move and the other was too excited and the nights where they curled up next to each other because it was the only way to stay warm.

 

(Misplaced devotion—those days died long ago.)

 

She follows their bodies and she’s almost glad that Nagato is dead. Or is she glad that Pein is dead? Pein wasn’t Nagato but Nagato was Pein and the borders between the two just barely existed as the years went on. Nagato wouldn’t have killed Jiraiya but Pein did. Pein did and what Pein wanted became what Nagato wanted.

 

So perhaps there was not much of a distinction between the two, just a difference in one existed before the other and then got swallowed by the other. Nagato’s body is too thin, too bony, and maybe that means that Pein was a predator. He attacked and ate away at Nagato until there was nothing left but a dream.

 

Either way, his eyes are no longer filled with dreams that are not his, dreams that he stole and borrowed from Yahiko. They covered him in a cloak, filling him with not-Nagato thoughts.

 

(Oh, that is it.: Nagato wasn’t Pein but Pein was Nagato and Yahiko combined.)

 

She wonders if she opened his eyes would she see the little boy’s eyes again, the one that hated to fight? Or would it still be Pein?

 

Yahiko looked more like Yahiko now, at the very least. “You were an idiot,” she sighs because he died and killed Nagato that same day, went and pulled her down too. “Now look—I’m alone.”

 

She’s not bitter—well, maybe just a little. It’s hard to hate them, though, so she swallows that feeling down and instead laments on what _couldhaveshouldhavewouldhave_ been.

 

She follows their bodies and drops little flowers as she does so. It’s funny how paper lasted longer than flesh and bone. She never pictured when she was younger, folding small squares into ships and birds ( _triangles turn into squares which turn into diamonds)_ , that paper would be her only companion.

 

Konan doesn’t pause or hesitate as she walks. She knows where she’ll take them. Even though it wasn’t much of a place, with a roof that leaked too much, it was their home. The only home she knew that had a Yahiko and a Nagato but not a Pein. She thinks they’d like the gesture if they knew it.

 

Maybe she’ll visit it every now and then, whenever she fears she’s becoming a not-Konan. She’ll visit and talk—maybe not talk because conversations with the dead would get her nowhere. Instead she’ll sit and stare at the sky and think just how closer she is to getting the world into that peaceful state.

 

(She’s not Nagato and she’s not Yahiko and she’s not the Kyuubi-vessel, so she doesn’t take on the whole dream. Instead she grabs a small piece of it and works on it little by little.

 

She’s not any of them but she’s still the third teammate, the friend, the sister, the almost-lover, and she will still follow them.)

 

She puts the too thin and too bony Nagato down first. Pein was a parasite, taking away everything until there was nothing but a will coursing through the veins where blood should have been. His arms are too skinny and long as she holds him and it is only in his hair that she can recognize. The hair is rougher than it used to be, dry and coarse like the sun they wanted.

 

Yahiko on the other hand hasn’t changed at all. There are pierces where there shouldn’t be but other than that it is as though he fell asleep. His body is too cold, though, as if it had been centuries since life kissed his skin.

 

It had but when she puts a hand on her own skill, she still feels no warmth. Maybe she died with them, that Konan who used to follow and chase them. Maybe that Konan found a way to continue to follow them. She places that third not-body with them and thinks it’s a fitting end.

 

(a fitting end because she’s leaving them and she won’t come back.

 

a fitting end because just like how it started, with her alone and lost, that is how it ends. She’s still alone and she’s still lost but this time she doesn’t have hands to lead her on. There’s just her own two feet and she thinks that it isn’t too bad this way.)

 

When she buries them, takes their too cold flesh and their too broken ideals and places it in the ground, she cries flower petals and crane feathers.


End file.
